Quality Assurance and Testing

Quality Engineering-A Must for Startups?

1,715,430,778,504 USD — According to a report by Tricentis, this was The Total Amount of Losses incurred in the year 2017 due to Failures/Defects in the software industry.

When these failures/defects happen in the production scenario, fixing them becomes costlier and loss of reputation is inevitable. We are in a connected world and word spreads quickly nowadays. One Bad Feedback and loss of several customers is on the cards.

Bottomline, these bugs in the production environment can be the difference between life and death for a start-up. All the effort, money and time can go wasted resulting in accusations and recriminations for failures and worse, lawsuits.

So, the idea is to do it right the first time, every time and most importantly on time.

Any startup initiates business with a unique product or service in focus. This is usually accompanied by a tight budget and stringent timelines. In consequence, most start-ups focus primarily on achieving the target rather than achieving it with quality.

Time to market and getting consumed are pivotal. However, sacrificing quality in lieu of this has resulted in massive losses and death of great ideas in the recent history of humankind.

To create a good enough product or offer a unique service, a lot of hard work and quality consciousness is required, and funds often go dry quickly.

Often it is seen, deploying a software engineer is considered enough to get the product developed. Employing a quality engineer is considered a matter of choice. A common school of thought has been if you can build then you may very well test as well, probably better than anybody else.

But, with this idea, how often do we really succeed?

How about a solution to this problem? Have you wondered what would it be if you can achieve success quickly within budget? Is it possible, leave alone probable?

To understand these questions well and answer them right, it is essential to look at quality from an open mind.

Quality, like beauty, lies in the eyes of the beholder. A user experience often defines the quality of a product or service.

It is a key success factor that a user experiences a product or service with a similar satisfaction as the creator perceived it to be.

A totally different perspective is needed to develop something as compared to consuming something. Right from the inception, it is pivotal to understand the value a product or service will bring to the consumer. This is where a “Quality Person” comes into the picture. Envisioning what features are needed and what are the possible scenarios a consumer would be into while consuming the product or service is essential.

Now that we have established a need for a quality focus, to achieve the right balance between development and QA, the right QA processes are required. Those QA processes should not only enable building the product or service line quickly but should also lead to repeatable success.

A QA process maturity model needs to be developed. It’s a stepwise process that often encompasses the following steps:

  • Develop a Quality consciousness
  • Conduct a process gap analysis
  • Build the desired QA processes
  • Use the QA processes
  • Employ right testing practices
  • Test right
  • Measure results
  • Develop an organization-wide QA culture
  • Continuous improvement

The Process is pre-defined but demands high expertise and deep experience to get executed properly. Comprehensive reporting and analytics solutions if executed properly can even help start-ups attain 10x results. Multiple methodologies, numerous testing modules and inestimable benefits arise the need for a seasoned Quality engineer.

Developing a quality consciousness and a Quality goal early in the journey often results in early and repeatable success.